She said “I don’t know, my accountant hasn’t done my books in the last couple of years.”

The sad thing is, she is not the only person who said this to me which tells me that you might have the same problem. You too might not be measuring the right thing in your business and this may be why you are not making as much money as you would like.

We will be focusing on a lot of measurements in The Social Club. If you aren’t a member, you can still measure the important stuff on your own.

Try measuring these three things every week, and month for the next year and let me know if your business grows, and if you make more money.

I’ll bet you do.

Share with me in the comments, what is the most important measurement in your business?

Are you sick and tired of logging onto Facebook only to find that someone has added you to yet another group that you didn’t ask to be a part of?

Or, is it finally time for you to leave the group you joined months ago that’s become nothing but a spam free-for-all?

I completely get how you might be feeling about Facebook Groups.

Sometimes it can be confusing and more than a little frustrating trying to navigate all the profiles, pages and groups on Facebook and understanding what’s what.

Here is a quick video that gives you a simple explanation of the difference between an open, closed and secret Facebook group AND gives you the step by step instructions on how to leave those groups you no longer want to be a part of for good!

Facebook Groups are a great way to bring people together when they are done well.

You can tell when a group has a solid leader and members who are happy being part of the community because everyone is engaged, adding value and participating.

In The Pilot Project Facebook Group we have a remarkable community of people who have called the Group their Mastermind because of the ongoing sharing, asking of questions, collaboration and support that takes place.

This is the power of Facebook Groups when the members who are there want to be there and show up fully.

The same is true when they are not done well. You can tell by the lack of engagement, and the volume of spam postings where everyone is trying to promote their own stuff.

You can also tell when they were a short sighted idea and are now abandoned with no love and attention to be felt by anyone.

Make your Facebook Group a great place for people to hang out because your community and relationship with people is the most important thing you can get from Facebook.

No, that isn’t a typo. 2.7 billion times a day, the “like” button is clicked on a page, image, status, video, etc.

So, here’s a question for you. Are YOU doing anything “likeable” on Facebook these days?

With numbers like that you must be wondering why it’s so hard to get more likes. Why is it that so many pages, posts and images go unviewed, unshared and unliked?

People want to be seen and heard. They click “like” to show support, to be a part of the conversation and to voice their opinion. They even wear shirts with a Facebook thumb to let everyone know that they like things on Facebook!

So it should be easy, right? You should be able to post, get engagement, likes and have fun but because this is not happening for you every day, I am guessing you might like some help.

I am guessing this may be part of your problem. What exactly is it you are sharing? Are you so focused on getting people to like you that you have forgotten to – give them something likable?

Here are ten ridiculously simple tips I have found that work and that you can implement starting right NOW:

1. Setup your Facebook page so that it is easy to get more information about you. Don’t have a crazy busy cover image that screams “Buy My Stuff”. Share about yourself, your business and ensure that your “about” section is full of information about who you are and what you do, as well as a link to your website.

2. Add your like box to your website using the Facebook Plugin. You will see this like box on the right hand side of my website on every page.

3. Post content daily. So many pages I see have been owner abandoned. They start off with the best of intentions but there is no plan in place to keep the activity going. Treat your page as you would any marketing plan within your business and give it the attention it needs to make it work. And by the way when I say post content daily, I don’t just mean smiley pictures of yourself. Remember, we want content people can consume and like!

4. Don’t over do it. If you are posting content too often people will unlike your page because they will see it is disruptive to everything else that is going on in there news feed. My recommendation is post a maximum of three – four times a day (morning, afternoon, evening) and a absolute minimum of once a day. (Don’t forget to reply to comments too – see #7!)

5. Post something good! Create a plan to share content, photos, videos, questions etc. Create variety for people and aim for engagement with your existing community versus just trying to acquire new likes. If you get your existing community is talking to you on your page, they will be marketing your page to their friends via their own news feeds for you.

6. Use Facebook as your page rather than your profile and comment and interact with other pages on a regular basis. I regularly gain new subscribers and receive comments from people who saw me commenting on other pages as my page.

7. Respond to people! When people do start to comment on your page acknowledge them, engage them and keep the dialogue going. Be likable!

8. Read Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki. This book is amazing! You can learn a LOT about being likable in this book.

9. Pay attention to what works. Too often we have our heads down being busy and we fail to take a look and see what is working. Pay attention to what works so you can do more of it. Your Facebook page has great analytics that make this easy. Learn how to use your analytics because it will help you to focus on what your community likes and the more your community likes and engages with your content the more visibility you get in the news feed.

10. Press like if this was helpful – serious. When you ask people to leave a comment or press like if they agree, you will be surprised to see how many respond. Don’t do it all the time, that get’s annoying, but every once in a while ask people to leave a comment, opinion, to share if your content adds value because sometimes people hesitate, (yes they do) before sharing because they are not sure if it is okay. I have seen people ASK in the comments for permission to share.

As a business owner learning how to use Facebook is key to engaging with people. If you are unsure about how to use Facebook and would like to learn more, check out this new training program that we just released from The Social Business Academy on How to Set up Your Facebook Profile and Page.

Wait …. before you go! One last thing…

Share with me in the comments – What ideas do you have? What makes you like a page? Do you like mine 😉

April 10, 2013 was the Live Your Best Day event in Ottawa and one of the most inspiring days of my life. The following morning, as I sat at the Brookstreet Hotel, I found myself very overwhelmed with gratitude for my life, my community, and mostly for my dear friend Samantha Moonsammy…

On Feb 28th, Samantha and I heard a rumour that Oprah was coming to town and we immediately knew we had to do something to celebrate Oprah coming to Canada’s Capital.

We thought it would be nice to do something to give back and celebrate our love for Oprah and her message. That something was the first ever, Live Your Best Day event.

The room was packed with close to 400 people. We had speakers from Toronto, Ottawa and Kansas who generously donated money to help us make this happen. We had sponsors (mostly local) who donated time, money and their services to help us pull of a spectacular day.

Later, as I sat in my room reflecting on Oprah’s message from the previous night, I began reading all the comments we received from people who attended our event, and I had tears of joy running down my face that we did this.

Samantha and I got to meet Oprah that night at “An Evening With Oprah”. We both had our picture taken with her and we even got one with Oprah’s arms tightly holding onto both of us celebrating Live Your Best Day. She knew about our event, rumour had it she even peeked into the room during our event (she was at the Hotel) to see what we were doing so I knew she saw the crowd and felt the love.

One thing that resonated above all else with me from her performance that night is this: You were born for a reason.

There is a purpose that only you can follow by listening to the whispers you hear deep inside. When you listen to the whispers, it is not one action, but many linking together that will help you live a life of greatness. This life of greatness is compounded when you serve others and use your purpose to create a life of good.

May you have a blessed and bold day, and take time to listen to those whispers.

How do you measure what matters in your business without getting stuck in analysis paralysis mode?

Do you start the year by looking at what you would like to generate in income and then break it down into small chunks so you can figure out how to get there?

For example, if you wanted to do 100K in sales, you can either close your eyes and pray that you get there… or you can break it down and figure out how to do $2,000 a week or $400 a day.

When you break something big down into a smaller chunk, it becomes easier because your mind can think of ways to accomplish smaller goals. Right away when you read $400 you were already thinking of ways weren’t you?

[pullquote_left]What about the size of your network or list? If you did $50K when your reach was about 1000 people, then if you double your reach size, the logic is your sales should double too right? [/pullquote_left]

You can also look at all your social media numbers the same way – they give you feedback with respect to the size of my platform. If they are increasing each month, what you are doing is working. If they are not increasing, then you are not reaching a larger audience.

You can also do this with your website by taking a look at how much traffic you have. Is it going up or down and what do you need to do to impact this number. If you blog twice a week instead of once, does your list grow, does traffic increase?

There is a term called “moving the needle” and everything you do should be about moving the needle in all of your metrics. If you do 10K in sales one month, you want to do that plus a bit more the next month. This is simple business planning that you need to do because you cannot build wealth if you do not get comfortable with numbers. If you want to learn more about how to do this, the Pilot Project is a great place to start.

You also have to look at the breakdown of your sales. Sometimes you may have a huge spike in sales because of something you did. For example, in my business, if I speak to an audience of about 300 people, usually I can generate close to 30K in sales. It is important to know what this number is if you want to use that data to help you move the needle. Knowing this, if you were a speaker and were able to do the same, and you wanted to do 100K in sales, you would want to find at least 3 big audiences that you could speak to each year because these exceptions would help you fast track your revenues.

You can be really intelligent about how you move the needle if you take time to look at your number and understand them. This is critical when it comes to sales because it is how you learn to sell more and recognize what works and what doesn’t work.

If you can generate 30K when you speak, but you only generate 3K when I do a webinar what should you focus on more?

That depends on you. If you don’t want to travel, then you need to focus on getting better at webinar sales, and getting more people to show up, or doing more of them so you can move the needle.

But here is the big message – if you do not look at your numbers and pay attention to what happens in your business you will never be able to predict or forecast where you are going and because of that, your business will always struggle.

You will be running a business on autopilot and your success or failure will be by accident.

How do you feel about that?

There is tremendous power and confidence in understanding your numbers, income, expenses, and in having grip on cash flow so you can design your business and your life a certain way. These measurements are key to your ability to generate wealth, more free time and financial independence.

That’s what the Pilot Project is all about. Is your business ready for a pilot progam to change things up?

If you are a business that trying to connect with your audience through social media, chances are you also need to know how to successfully run an online business. It’s not as simple as it looks, in fact people running successful online businesses are very strategic and savvy about how they approach this way of running a business.

I’d like to share eight simple steps that can help you get started once – and this is important, you have absolute clarity around your business model. That’s right, the model, the way you make money.

1. Pick an Ideal Client: You should know who your client is, be able to pick them out of a crowd, and know exactly how to identify with them when the are talking to you. Yes, you need a crazy sense of awareness about who they are if you want to serve them well. If you think everyone is your client, you have fallen into the trap of most new business owners. This is serious work and it is important work and is covered in great detail in The Social Business Academy.

2. Go Where Your Ideal Client Is: Where do they hang out? If you don’t know who they are and what they like to do or are interested in, it is almost impossible for you to find them. If you cannot find them – you cannot build a relationship and that is the key to creating success. It’s not some fancy system, it’s all about your ability to build a relationship.

3. Learn How to Connect with Your Ideal Client: Ever meet someone and you had so much in common you hit it off right away? When you know who your ideal client is and you know what their needs are and how you can help them sometimes you can connect with very little effort. When we meet people face to face we are pretty savvy about social norms, what is appropriate and what is not. Learn these same norms for online. Learn how to be social. You need to talk with other people online, not at them.

4. Build Your List with the Right Audience: All lists are not created equally. You can buy a list, you can mine the internet and add names to a list (believe it or not this is how an email marketer taught me years ago and I didn’t do it because I knew it was wrong). Or you can build your list with integrity. If you don’t know who your audience is, you will never be able to attract them to your list. I can’t say it enough, know thy client, it matters!

5. Have a Solid Communication Plan: Build a communication plan that helps you to create new fresh content on your website every week. Then create a social sharing plan so that you can use that content via your social networks to add value. Communication is key – if you don’t have a plan, you really do have a plan, it’s called “planning to fail.”

6. Demonstrate Credibility and Reliability: This is probably the most critical action of the entire list. You must be credible in all that you do and in the content that you create and most of all you must be reliable. Don’t say “weekly blog” if you blog once a month. Say what you mean, and do what you say you will do – always.

7. Offer Them Something to Buy: Don’t be “pitchy-pitchy” right from the very start. That is just way too hard and it makes you look desperate for business.Have a plan when it comes to selling something online. It isn’t just a magic button that works, you need to consider what they are buying and what happens in the back end once they press that button to say “yes”.

8. Wow Them with Everything You Do (especially with what you charge money for): When people are happy with your products and services – they tell you about it, and they tell their friends. This is called Social Proof and your next customer is looking for it.

Make what you offer so spectacular that your customers are dying to thank you and tell all their friends about you. If you do this one thing exceptionally well, you will never have to sell again because your customers will do that work for you. I hope that this gives you a starting point to look at how to build an online business. When you are ready to take your business to the next level, check out The Social Business Academy for a more intensive program.

Or if you just want to learn about Online Marketing and the details I covered in this course, you can get more information about it here.

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